The present invention relates to the field of medical image processing, and more particularly to a method for generating digital images in a format readable by medical image processing apparatus, to digital images generated by such a method as well as to a method for the quality control of the medical image processing consoles based on the generated digital images.
Medical image processing consoles are used in many applications, either for a diagnostic purpose, or for a therapeutic purpose, to prepare or perform some treatments, in particular in the radiotherapy field which consists in sterilizing the cancerous tumours by means of high doses of ionizing radiation usually delivered with multiple concentric X-ray beams produced by an linear electron accelerator. Taking into account the potential hazard radiotherapy techniques may involve, the treatments are simulated beforehand on an image processing console referred to as a treatment planning system (TPS).
This treatment planning system comprises in particular a module, called virtual simulation console, allowing the optimisation of the radiation geometry by defining a set of concentric radiation beams allowing to homogeneously irradiate the full volume of the tumour, while protecting as much as possible the healthy tissues surrounding the tumour.
The virtual simulation console works on the patient's digital images, obtained by exploring the patient by means of a X-ray scanner associated with the virtual simulation console. The scanner provides a set of tomographic cross-sections of the patient, which will constitute digital images to be processed by the virtual simulation console to build up a tridimensional virtual patient which will be used to determine the optimal irradiation geometric conditions previously defined.
This geometric optimization is performed on the Virtual Simulation (VS) console by means of various software tools (contouring, expansions, positioning of the beam intersection point, incidence selection, conforming the beam boundaries, positioning cutaneous marks, production of reference views, etc.) that should be tested because their performances directly determine the virtual simulation quality, and hence the treatment quality.